sins of the fathers
by hyacinthian
Summary: Mulder knows the ways history repeats itself, the way that people are predictable in wanting to distinguish themselves. (He isn't his father.)


Mulder still has nightmares about it –

His parents come home from their dinner party, and his head hurts and his vision's blurry, everything a little too bright, and he calls, "Samantha?"

The key turns in the lock and the door doesn't creak when his parents come in and his mother's maybe half-laughing already, and she says, "Fox, what are you doing up? It's very late."

He forgets where he is in the house and how he got there.

"Samantha's gone," he says, and his mother blanches. "Samantha's gone. I think someone took her." And he closes his eyes for just a second – his mother slams the bedroom door upstairs and he shakes on his feet – and they start yelling already, his parents, screaming at each other, and he thinks, none of this is going to help them find her.

"Maybe we should call the police," his mother says, and his father's jaw clenches.

"Did I do something wrong?"

His mother doesn't reach for him.

"Go to bed, Fox."

His stomach turns – _was it me was it something i did _–

Mulder doesn't sleep much.

* * *

And it's those days, those mornings, when he wakes up and heads to the basement, surrounded by slides and the smell of dust and old paper and damp, that he thinks about his father, thinks about Quonochontaug and Martha's Vineyard and the secrets kept between plastic-covered lamps and kitschy end tables in that basement. He wants to think it's enough that he's here with the X-Files, that he has found something worth fighting for - something even beyond Samantha - but then he will find the tight scrawl of his father's handwriting on the corner of one of his photos of Samantha, the way the letters seem to fall on each other, and the only thing he can think about is sacrifice.

His father wasn't a noble man. He knows that as much as he can know anything about his family.

And even if he didn't, there is the casual arrogance of the Cancer Man, breathing out secrets or lies or both in smoke, passing on riddles about what he knows of the Mulder family and its secrets. _Whether you like to believe it or not, Fox, your father was a selfish man._

Mulder supposes the unspoken question in all of that is _why do you expect you'll be any different? Everyone gives up in the end. There's always something that's just too high a price._

And Mulder remembers the fights that his parents used to have, explosive and loud, the way the slamming doors and the raised voices would echo in the hallways, and he and Samantha would sit in her bedroom – the tomboyishness of it fading away slowly to pink and preteen adolescence then, even with her stack of baseball cards on the edge of her desk – and play checkers and pretend they were somewhere else.

He can still hear the way she clicked the edge of her checkers pieces against the board, the softness in her voice when she said, "King me!" The years have brushed the sharpness off his memories of their relationship.

And Samantha drew her knees up to her chest, playing with the ends of her braids (and it terrifies him, sometimes, that all he has of her is this image, her in the overalls and the braids, part illusion, part reality; he never wants to believe he could ever forget her, but he knows that it is out of his control, that he has already started and maybe that's what seeing Dr. Werber was about, _not forgetting _as much as the truth, but they are two different things, no matter how close they seem to be), and she just says, "Your move, Fox."

And their father swears and there is the sound of glass shattering in the distance, and even with her small smile, he knows that she's afraid.

He is her big brother, after all.

* * *

Outside the Lincoln Memorial when it's pouring out, steady thrumming rain that they're already forecasting will swell the Potomac, midnight, and the Cancer Man is smiling placidly, smoking a cigarette.

"Your father gave up his crusade," he says.

Mulder bites the inside of his cheek, rocking back and forth on his feet. "My father believed in the truth," he says.

The Cancer Man smiles. "He may have believed in it," he says, before taking another long drag on the cigarette, "but he wasn't willing to die for it."

Mulder coughs out a laugh. "Why - why play these games? Why ask to meet me here right now to talk about nothing?" His hands are in his coat pockets, and there's lint and spare change and a cracked sunflower seed. "It's always the same with you."

The Cancer Man flicks the cigarette into the street. There are sirens in the distance. "Then why do you come here, Fox?" He fishes in his pocket for another cigarette. "You wouldn't come if you didn't believe me."

"All I get is your bullshit."

And the bastard just coughs into his sleeve and smiles, turning on his heel to head out into the dark.

* * *

There's an episode of _The Twilight Zone _he remembers catching with his father once. Christmas time, his mother in the kitchen with a cocktail, Christmas carols playing softly, and he was on the last legs of his rebellious teenager phase.

His dad with a tumbler of scotch in his hand, and the two of them sitting on the sofa, watching silently. He had still been afraid of his father then, he remembers, although the resentment was beginning to set in.

And it was a man who hallucinated about a case that he could never solve, a life's quest that left him committed and crazy and alone.

There's probably a lesson to be learned in that, Mulder thinks. But he's never been particularly good at that. Learning from mistakes.

* * *

_Every man has his price, Mr. Mulder_, the Well-Manicured Man had said once, and he wonders why they all talk to him if he is ultimately the enemy; they all want something from him as much as they want to conceal the truth.

"Every man has his price," the Cancer Man echoes, pressing his hands into his pockets. "Are you willing to die for the truth? Or to let others you care about die for it?"

He doesn't say anything, resolutely tries to keep his expression neutral.

The Cancer Man just smiles. "Carry on your father's legacy?"

"Do you have anything new to tell me, or just more of these lies about my father?" he says.

And he just repeats, "Every man has his price."

* * *

Mulder knows the ways history repeats itself, the way that people are predictable in wanting to distinguish themselves; he's sure that if he thought long enough, he could summon the statistics he culled from too many late-night sessions in the university library in his undergraduate years.

He isn't like his father.

He won't be like his father.

(And even if part of him believes that to be more lie than truth, he knows that it will lead somewhere. It has already led him to the X-Files, it has already led him to Scully, it will lead him to the answers.)

* * *

A few days before Christmas, the Cancer Man calls to set up another meeting.

He drives to Connecticut instead.


End file.
